CM von Hausswolff premieres There Are No Crows Flying around the Hancock, commissioned by Lampo.

The new work has been more than a year and a half in the making. In August 2003, the Swedish artist visited Chicago and collected sound sources from atop the John Hancock building, selecting that location because it oversees the city. Hausswolff recorded building vibrations, wind gusts, tourists’ mumbles and sirens from the street below. Later in his studio, over several months, he added a series of feedback rotations to suggest crows (guardians or enemies?) encircling the conceptual tower.

Hausswolff’s No Crows—dense, low-end drone music—is his rumination on security and paranoia.

In the same ’03 visit, he also began work on Red Empty (Chicago 2003) for Lampo and partner WhiteWalls, the latest in a series of projects spanning from Bangkok to Santa Fe in which the artist set 1000-watt red spotlights against the architecture of run-down, abandoned buildings—and his first that did not result in a long-term installation, but rather a series of short events that exist only as photographs.

The audio work, There Are No Crows Flying around the Hancock, is published by Lampo. The book, Red Empty (Chicago 2003), is published by WhiteWalls/Lampo.

Carl Michael von Hausswolff (b.1956, Linköping, Sweden) is a composer, visual artist and curator based in Stockholm. His main tools are recording devices (camera, tape deck, radar, sonar) used in an ongoing investigation of electricity, frequency, architectural space and paranormal electronic interference. Major exhibitions and performances include Documenta (1997), Johannesburg Biennial (1997), ICC Tokyo (2000), Biennale di Venezia (2001, 2003 and 2005) and Portikus (2004). Hausswolff received a Prix Ars Electronica award for Digital Musics in 2002.

He is co-monarch (with Leif Elggren) of the Kingdoms of Elgaland-Vargaland, all areas of no-man’s land, territories between national boundaries on both land and sea, digital and mental spaces. This nation has its own national anthem, flag, coat of arms, currency, citizens and ministers.

Lampo first presented CM von Hausswolff in February 2001, when he performed Circulating over Square Oceans with sonar, radar, oscillators and microphones. In August 2003 Hausswolff screened his video project Hashima, Japan 2002 at Lampo.

Support provided by the Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation, the American-Scandinavian Foundation and the Governor’s International Arts Exchange Program of the Illinois Arts Council